On the recordJanuary 14, 2020
I thank the gentleman from Texas for yielding. I rise in opposition to this rule and primarily in opposition to H.R. 1230, that is one of the subjects of this combined rule that we have. The legislation that is coming before, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, reaches way too far. I am one of the people in this Congress that has met payroll clear back to 1975. I haven't kept track of all the people we hired, but we hired them across the full range that we had the opportunity of their age, whether it was on the young side or whether they stopped showing up on the other side. We want people that can do the job, and we want to take good care of those folks. We want to build a reputation that we are a good place to work. I want to have all of those workers come together at the Christmas party and join together like family, and that is what happened just this past week with King Construction. I think about what the impact of this proposed legislation does, and it works in the reverse of what many of the proponents would like to have it do. Certainly, when you take the definition of age discrimination and you expand it to mean if it is only the preponderance of the evidence--what we have in current law is a preponderance of evidence and the but-for language. In other words, if an employee alleges they have been discriminated against because of age, there could be multiple other factors that were involved in that decision.…
